


look at the way (we gotta hide what we're doing)

by tuainfinityandbeyond (TheAceApples)



Series: tiffany sang and everyone danced [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: F/M, GFY, Hugo Award nominee, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mentioned Allison Hargreeves/Luther Hargreeves - Freeform, Mentioned Ben Hargreeves/Klaus Hargreeves, Netflix/Comic Fusion, Post-Canon, Pseudo-Incest, by which i mean: i'm keeping the punk rock band and exactly nothing else
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 14:23:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18251630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAceApples/pseuds/tuainfinityandbeyond
Summary: Nothing is the same when they get back.(One thing is the same when they get back.)





	look at the way (we gotta hide what we're doing)

His place was… nice, Diego supposed.

The windows were a little less dusty, letting in more natural light than they did in the old timeline. There were a few more brightly-colored rugs on the floors courtesy of Klaus, a bunch more photos and pretty knickknacks scattered around the room from Allison, and a _lot_ more food in the—now full-sized—fridge and cupboards to keep Five’s ravenous teenage appetite at bay.

It was all very… nice.

… Was it petty to say that he hated it?

Part of him—the part whose place he’s usurped, and isn’t that an awful thought—knew how all the changes came to be: remembered each cut-glass figurine and happy family photo and crude drawing from Claire that Allison had sent him over the years, recalled every time Klaus barged his way in with a crinkly paper bag and an _hola, brother mine, you’ll never guess what I found this time!,_ could recount the numerous ‘eating me out of house and home’ jokes they’d all made about Five since the kid’s reappearance in the timeline. But—

Diego hadn’t been lying when he’d told Luther that he liked his place. He liked the beat-up brick walls, and the moth-eaten curtains over the windows, and the knowledge that every item in it was handpicked by _Diego_ because it was _his space_ and no one else’s.

The Diego whose memories simmered just beneath his consciousness, though, was—had been—different. He still left home at seventeen, still got himself thrown out of the police academy because he just couldn’t hack Normal People rules, still leaped at the chance to mop floors in his favorite old gym in exchange for the boiler room that no one used. But he somehow managed to swing keeping in touch with his family, too. Lucky bastard.

And now Diego stood at the foot of the stairs of his-not-his home, staring at a strip of pictures from some amusement park photo booth of himself, Allison, Vanya, and Klaus all making a wide range of absurd faces, and desperately wanted a drink. Because they all, to a one, looked so unbearably _happy._

Fuck, he even _remembered_ what a great day they’d had together, as he tore himself out of stunned stillness and stomped over to the fridge. Cooing over Allison’s bright red micro braids and Klaus’ Hermes scarf, as he wrenched open the door; congratulating Vanya on her promotion to second chair and waving away sympathies about the shiner from his latest fight, as he bypassed all the carefully-labeled leftovers and lifted the top of a pulp carton. _(Organic, Pasture-Raised, And Cruelty-Free!_ the box assures him.)

“I swear to god, if you crack that into your mouth, I’m leaving.”

The knife never leaves Diego’s hand but not for lack of trying—some buried instinct, muscle memory, from the other Diego surfaced the second the air shimmered behind him and stilled his hand. “Mambo, you motherf—” He cut off before finishing, and turned to face their most wayward brother. The sight of Five brought him up short. “You’re older,” he said blankly.

Five sighed at the observation the same way he always did whenever pretty much anyone spoke around him. “I’ve been working on some stuff, and hey! I’m serious!” he warned as Diego raised the egg to his mouth. “Luther told me about your crimes—you do that in front of me, I’m out. Seriously, I lived through the apocalypse and _I_ think that’s nasty. Have some class, have some… coffee?”

He lowered the egg. “Ah, _that’s_ why you’re here,” Diego said knowingly, pulling the bag of Kona beans that the other Diego had bought from its hiding place. He tossed Five the bag and pointed him toward the coffee maker. “Be my guest.”

 _“Spacibo,”_ Five said with that wide, unsettling grin. It sat strangely on his face, caught somewhere between the innocent little boy routine he’d ruthlessly exploited as a seeming thirteen-year-old and a handsome young man finally growing into his potential.

Whatever he’d done to rapidly age his body, Five had certainly grown into his height, Diego noted as the kid brushed past him in search of creamer and their eyes met at an equal level. “An even six foot, huh?” he commented after a couple minutes of quiet rifling through his possessions. Five hummed. “Love the outfit, by the way—the sparkly vest really bring out your eyes, and the skinny jeans make it look like you have an ass.”

Five shot him a venomous look. _Victory._

“Klaus,” he said through gritted teeth, “was the only one whose clothes fit, and I needed to get out of that _damn_ house.”

Diego frowned.“Did something happen?” He’d barely been gone a couple hours, for Christ’s sake. His brother didn’t look at him. “Five?”

“Klaus was going through your old room,” he finally said, staring determinedly at the coffee maker. The steady _drip-drip-drip_ was the only sound for a long moment. Diego opened his mouth, but Five eventually continued, “He found an old vinyl record. It, um. It was by a band. Called the Prime Eights.”

Every part of Diego went hot and cold all at once. “Shit,” he said succinctly. _Fuck._ “What happened.”

Five still didn’t really meet his eyes as the coffee finally gurgled to a halt. “Klaus played it, of course. Didn’t know the, mmm, _history_ of the band,” he explained, pouring himself a cup and settling his lanky frame against the sink. “He finally realized it wasn’t such a great idea when Vanya started going white around the edges. Literally.” Five ignored Diego’s renewed cursing and forged on. “He was actually doing a good job of calming her down, talking her through it… but then _Luther_ walked in and, well. You know how _those two_ are.”

Jesus Christ on a cracker, did he ever.

Whatever issues Diego had with Luther over the years, whatever scuffles they’d gotten into, paled in comparison to the fallout of what happened with Allison. And not a one of them, Allison included, fucking blamed her for it, either. Locking her in her goddamn childhood prison, Jesus fucking _Christ,_ Luther.

In fact, the only person who _hadn’t_ taken that shit personally and immediately backed Vanya up in the aftermath of the whole ‘time-blip away from the apocalypse’ shit had been Five, and, well. The man had been a time-travelling assassin, after all, and while Five said he understood the reasoning, he _still_ called Luther a prick when he found out how the fucker had gone about it.

“How bad was it?” Diego finally managed to ask around the lump in his throat.

Five eyed him intently, but Diego dropped his gaze to the intricate pattern of the rug beneath his boots. “It could have been worse,” he mused, daintily blowing steam from his mug. “A whole bunch of pillows and harsh words thrown around, and Vanya stomped out of the house in a rage, but.” He took a sip. “No one’s dead, nothing’s broken, and Allison was _still_ yelling at the big lug when I slipped out and—”

“Nabbed Klaus’ least offensive clothes on the way?” Diego finished with a halfhearted smirk, meeting Five’s steel gaze for a moment before ducking his head back down. “Did she… say anything about it? The band, I mean.”

Five had given him shocking number of weird looks over the course of a five-minute conversation, but this had to have been the most searching of the bunch. “Said it brought back bad memories. Asked him to turn it off. Told him to fuck off when he tried to pry. ‘Subtly.’” He sounded amused by that.

“I…” _Shit,_ Diego thought, scrubbing at hand through his hair. _Shit shit shit, fuck._ “It was us. The Prime Eights. Vanya on guitar, me on bass, a guy we knew on drums. Can’t believe I just left the fucking record lying around…”

“Well, to be fair—”

 _“To be fa-a-i-i-r,”_ Diego sang under his breath, grinning openly.

“Shut the fuck up, Luther isn’t here. Anyway, _to be fair,_ he was looking for porn, which is what _normal_ teenage boys keep stashed underneath their beds, so he probably assumed it would be something embarrassing. Not, I don’t know, we-shall-never-speak-of-it-again _traumatizing.”_

“It wasn’t—” Diego cut off with a sigh. Crossed his arms awkwardly. Uncrossed them. Recrossed them. Did it again. _Fuck,_ he thought. _“Fuck,”_ he hissed. “I don’t know. Maybe it was, actually. _I don’t know.”_

Five tapped the edge of his mug impatiently. “Care to share with the class, dipshit?”

“No,” he replied, mostly out of spite. But also out of, well, a lot of other emotions that he didn’t really feel like examining at the moment. Or ever.

“Well, tough shit.” Five blipped across the room so they were almost nose to nose, his unpleasantly-pleasant smile fixed in place. “Because my _very favorite_ sibling threw a table lamp at my least favorite sibling’s _face_ and then stormed out of the house like she was about to either commit a felony or eat an entire tub of ice cream once she got home. _And I’d like to know why.”_

Diego’s mouth went dry. “Thought you said nothing was broken,” he snarked back, mostly out of habit.

“You mean besides Vanya’s heart?” Five asked sweetly. “I caught the lamp before it hit him. She moved on to pillows after that. I didn’t bother intercepting those. Now, what.” Diego took a step back and Five followed him. “Did you.” And again. “Do.” Diego bumped into the desk and abruptly realized that he’d allowed himself to be caged in by a feral, time-and-space-travelling, old-man-in-a-teenager’s-body assassin. _“To Vanya.”_

They glared at each other for several seconds before Diego broke.

_“I fucked her over, okay?”_

Something between doubt and alarm flickered over his brother’s face before smoothing out. “You…” he said, trailing off uncertainly, and Diego wanted to hit him. And then himself. And then Five again.

 _“No,_ not like—argh!” He muscled his way past Five, who let him go with a cool expression and a hard glint in his eyes. “I—we—when Dad found out about the band,” he finally spat out, “he tried to send Vanya away. Gave her a one-way ticket to Paris and basically told her to get the fuck out and not come back until she went back to playing ‘appropriate’ music. Not a fan of punk rock, apparently.”

“Shocking,” Five deadpanned.

Diego seethed in his general direction. “I—didn’t want her to go. I didn’t want to lose the band, my sister, everything we’d built together, so. I said, fuck it, let’s just do one last gig and then skip town.” He stalked over to the couch and sat down with enough force to scoot it back a few inches. “Prime Eights was pretty popular, we were getting paid pretty well, we could do it. We could leave, and never have to deal with any of Dad’s shit ever again. She—it took some convincing, but… she finally said yes.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, trying to breathe through the memories, but apparently Five could see where the story was going. “Oh, no,” he whispered. “Diego, what did you—”

 _“I didn’t show,”_ Diego said, voice low and vicious. _“I never showed up. And she never came back.”_

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

“Of course she didn’t,” Five finally scoffed. “Why would she come back, when you abandoned her first?”

“I know,” Diego said quietly, and the old hurt welled up and leaked into his voice. “I—there was one last patrol with Luther, and then there was this whole gang thing, and. By the time it was over and done with, by the time I was able to get away, she’d finally stopped waiting for me to show.” He rubbed tiredly at his eyes. “I don’t even blame her. Never did.”

The couch cushions dipped next to him. “That wasn’t in her book,” Five finally said, as carefully as Diego had ever heard him say anything. “And I had that book for over forty years, I’d know. Not even a hint of it.”

Diego gave a single, dry laugh. “Yeah, I thought that was funny, too. You’d think, if you’re gonna write a book about how fucked up our family was, you’d include the straw that broke the camel’s back and got you out of it. But, no, not a word.”

“Is that why you were so angry when it came out?” Five asked, back to being blunt as a goddamn hammer. “Because she didn’t talk about what happened, even though she talked about so many… other things?”

His mouth curved to one side. “Would you believe me if I said no?”

“Not really.”

Less than an hour ago, Diego’s biggest problem was that the room he slept in was nicer than he was used to. God fucking hated him as much as she hated Klaus, apparently. Or maybe she hated all of them, and that’s why their lives were such shit. “I guess,” he said, taking a deep breath. “It was a lot easier to be angry about it, than admit that it wasn’t the first, or the second, or the fifteenth, or even the _fiftieth_ time that I abandoned her. That any of us did.” He rolled the words around in his mouth before continuing, “I guess, it was easier to feel angry and betrayed rather than face up to the fact that, out of all of us, she had the most reason to feel angry and betrayed… and all she seemed to feel was sad and lonely. She didn’t write that book to take a shot at any of us except Dad, but we still felt just as called out, because we followed his lead on everything, including how to treat her.

“We took her for granted, pushed her away, pushed her _out,_ and then we had the balls to get mad when she finally spoke up about it.” He laughed again. “Years after the fact, she finally said something. And we did the same thing we always do. _I_ did the same thing I always do: ignored her, and then lashed out when I couldn’t do that.”

God, he’d speed-read through the whole damn book, just waiting for her to bring up Prime-8’s and the final time he’d disappointed her. The last time she ever trusted him, and the last time he let her down. But there was nothing. Nothing at all. And, _fuck,_ if indignation wasn’t a hell of a drug. Diego didn’t even need to ask Klaus about it to know how true _that_ was.

“Did you know I told her she didn’t belong at the funeral?” he wondered idly, staring at the ceiling. Five said nothing, so he kept talking. “And when everyone thought Mom had, fuckin’, _poisoned Dad_ or some shit, I said she shouldn’t get a vote about what we should do about it. Until she agreed with me, that is. And then when Hazel and Cha-Cha shot up the house, I called her a _liability._ Said she shouldn’t even be in our fuckin’ _family home_ because—fuck, I don’t know—she didn’t have powers, maybe? I said she could’ve been killed, could have gotten one of _us_ killed, and basically called her useless garbage to her face. Honestly? I’m surprised she didn’t go supernova on us all sooner.”

“Gee, you ever consider apologizing?” was Five’s sarcastic reply. Well, sarcastic in tone, but genuine in sentiment.

Diego snorted. “What, and face my issues like a grown-up? Admit my mistakes like a man? Have you ever _met_ any of us, Mambo?”

“I’m going to kill Klaus for starting that,” Five muttered darkly. Then, louder, “Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s mostly you and Luther who have that problem. Allison’s all about apologizing and making amends these days, Klaus has always been shockingly self-aware, to my knowledge Ben’s never done a bad thing in his life, and I—” Five hesitated. “Well, I can admit when I’ve fucked up, I like to think.”

“Yeah,” Diego nodded, “just me and Luther in this rowboat of emotional stupidity. Can’t even talk to the people we lo—” He gritted his teeth to stem the flow of words, but the damage was already done.

“I _knew it,”_ Five hissed, scooting to the edge of the couch and turning to face him. “What _is it_ with you and Luther wanting to screw our sisters?”

Diego closed his eyes and breathed deep. “What, and you think Klaus and Ben were just real good buddies?” he said sharply. “Or, wait, that was after—whatever, forget it. Besides, Vanya hit the nail on the head when she said it in her book: ‘family in name, but not in fact. After Ben died, we were just strangers living under the same roof.’ Not one of us really understood the concept of brothers and sisters until we were teenagers, and by then—”

“What, you’d already decided that since Allison and Luther were doing their thing, you’d pair up with Vanya?”

“You’re a real prick, you know that?” Diego asked pleasantly, watching the late afternoon shadows move across the walls. “You never heard about ‘bonding through trauma’ and all that shit? Never read a psychology book? Look, none of us knew how _real_ brothers and sisters are supposed to work because none of us knew how real _people_ are supposed to work. We were just… weapons, to Dad. Not people, and certainly not children. Mom did her best, and I love her for it, but she’s not human. She couldn’t teach us to be _normal_ when she didn’t even have a baseline for normality.”

Five made a vague, dissatisfied noise and Diego decided he’d had enough judgment and pulled out his trump card. “Besides, you’re not immune to it, either. I’ve seen how you look at Vanya _and_ Ben. And I’m not even going to mention Delores.”

“You’re right, you’re _not,”_ Five said abruptly, getting to his feet so he could tower over Diego. “Think whatever you like. Make all the excuses you want—it doesn’t matter. It’s not important that you say all this shit to _me,_ Diego; it’s important that you say all this shit to _Vanya._ You know, the one who got so upset by just the _memory_ of what happened that she toed the edge of going supernova. The one who said ‘they all hate me’ when I first got back from _post apocalyptica._ I’m not the one who needs or deserves to here this. She is.”

Five stared hard at Diego until he sighed and nodded, then turned and blipped out without another word—leaving Diego to stare at a room touched by every member of his family, except Vanya.

**Author's Note:**

> will earn its rating in chapter two
> 
> 4/18/19 update: chapter two has officially passed 6k with more to go. progress is slow-going but continuous. ~~i promise this isn't like my other fics, i actually know where i'm going with it.~~


End file.
